The Future is in the Past
by Elemnestra Aethelflaeda
Summary: Or, Jenny's Education of the Interwoven Nature of Time. In which Jenny lives her life, and inextricably entangles her timeline in the process.


**Disclaimer: I own nothing anyone recognises.**

_**The Future is in the Past**_

_**or, **_

_**Jenny's Education of the Interwoven Nature of Time**_

When Jenny first set off on her adventures around the universe, she wasn't naive, not completely, not really. She knew that people could be cruel and merciless and unforgiving, and even just plain unreasonable, but...she hadn't really seen any of it yet. And knowing wasn't understanding. And she'd just been born, and was still filled with the amazing reality of the universe, how incredible it all was. And when she explored the universe she lived in, she enjoyed it. And she couldn't imagine doing anything else.

After a while, Jenny found some technology just lying around, which stirred some faint, vague memories in her mind. Memories right at the back, where she'd picked up some genetic memory from her Dad. So for the next few days, she spent all her time in junkyards, picking up odd bits and pieces, fixing them together. And after not too much time (relatively, anyway) she had a pretty-much-working-version of a vortex manipulator. This, Jenny figured, was pretty good going for someone who had never (not exactly) seen or heard of vortex manipulators before.

After a few more years (or what she estimated to be years – it was hard to tell the exact time, Jenny found, when you were travelling in it all the time, even with Jenny's extra senses) Jenny came to the 26th century, which she decided she liked very much, although she wasn't really sure where they'd picked up the idea that aliens didn't exist. But she didn't like this Alliance much, and thought that they were possibly just a little too powerful for their own good (or anyone else's good), and that maybe she should stay around for a bit, just to see what they were doing. And then when the call for colonists to settle on a new planet came out, well, she thought that she may as well go along. It'd be a new experience, anyway, and Jenny was all for those; visiting a planet the old-fashioned way, not jumping around using the vortex. She double-checked the planet's name, as she packed her bags (the bags were mostly for show; Jenny travelled light). Oh, that was right – Miranda. It was called Miranda.

When the air in the processors started feeling strange, tingling as she breathed, Jenny suspected the Alliance – she still didn't trust them, not even after all these months living on a world they had terraformed and provided (or maybe that was _why_ she still didn't trust them). When she realised what it was that the new air was doing to the inhabitants of Miranda, she disapproved of the Alliance even more greatly than she had before (though not yet to the point of despairing of the human race; just this specific set of humans, ruling this set of planets). She knew more about the evil in the universe than she had all those years ago, more than when she had first set out, but this was among some of the worst cruelties she had seen (and she wasn't against condemning the Alliance for it; among other things, Jenny was also a soldier; she didn't forgive everyone). The chemicals in the air weren't affecting Jenny – not yet, anyway – but she knew that it was already too late for Miranda and its people (and she began to understand some of what had showed, what she had seen, in her Dad's voice and mind, at times).

She left Miranda as quickly as she could, after that. But she stayed with that same set of planets, still interested, still not knowing if she could find some way to stop what the Alliance was doing. She still wanted to be like her Dad, really. But the Alliance caught up with her, in the end. And when they did catch up with her, it wasn't even related to Miranda; not at first. It was because no-one had seen her age, because she may or may not have been paying taxes or, indeed, actually living anywhere. But when they looked at her records, and then cross-referenced them with other records... That was when they found out about how she had been on Miranda...and how she had escaped.

The Alliance kept her locked up, then. Oh, they said it was for own protection, but they took away all her possessions, and did tests on her...and she knew very well, as she had from the start, that she was there because she was different, and the Alliance didn't understand her, and they wanted to use her for their own benefit (and they didn't want her telling the 'verse their secrets, and she couldn't remember why she hadn't told the whole 'verse, or why she hadn't left the galaxy entirely). When they began to cut into her brain, and found things they thought weren't meant to be there, they only wanted to experiment on her more.

She began to...forget things. Little things, at first, like whether or not she had been able to find time to brush her teeth that day. Or what she had eaten for dinner that night. And she could try and tell herself that it was stress, it was natural...but in the back of her mind, where the plans for time travel technology had come from, Jenny knew losing her memory was a very bad sign. And when she began to forget larger things, like the tactics that had been implanted in her head since day one, or what the original shuttle she had escaped in looked like, she couldn't brush it off as stress anymore. And by the time she had been locked up for a couple of years, she knew Dad wasn't going to be able to rescue her. For one thing, he didn't know she was here...he didn't know that she was even alive (and why hadn't she found him and told him?).

Then, one day, the experiments went too far, and Jenny forgot...nearly everything. And then a little later (she wasn't sure how long), the Alliance had played around a little too much with her DNA, with her biodata, a little too much with that part of her biology that controlled the regeneration cycle, a little too much with what they didn't understand. When she next opened her eyes, she was a little girl. Well, thought the tiny part of Jenny that was still Jenny, I guess at least I'll get a childhood this time around...But she knew, inside, that she couldn't survive here, like this, for much longer, even without the experiments (and living like this wasn't much of a childhood, or even much of a life). Restlessness (wanderlust) had been passed down to her along with a double heartbeat.

The little girl who was still Jenny (just) knew that one day her guards would make a mistake. One day they would underestimate her. One day they would slip up. One day... And when they did, thinking her unseeing of the world around her, when in reality she was simply patiently waiting, she escaped, activating the last remnants of battery in her old homemade vortex manipulator (re-stolen...no, re-_appropriated_).

Still a little girl, still younger than ten years old, she landed somehow on Earth in the late 20th century. And she found herself in an orphanage, no memory left. Almost no memory. She had just enough memory left to, when they asked for a name, give them one. Not Jenny, though, she couldn't quite remember that. But still she remembered a name, a name of something she knew was important. Miranda, she told the people at the orphanage. My name is Miranda.

And she wasn't there for long before she was found, by a young couple who said that they were married, and that Miranda was just the child they were looking for. And Miranda went along with it, because, who knew, maybe they were right (it wasn't as though _she_ knew any better). So she went to school, and made friends, and in general acted far smarter than her physical age and appearance suggested.

Later, when it seemed to her that she had been a little girl for an annoyingly long amount of time (even if she was still growing, it was so _slow_), and her two parents (who she knew weren't really her parents) didn't seem to be finding that too strange, Miranda (_...Jenny...?_) found herself adopted, again. Only this time it was by a man who called himself the Doctor.

And her capacity for ageing was still a little messed up, because now she became older, having birthdays and everything that came with them, but she still had a feeling that she was now ageing too fast, rather than too slow. And her new adoptive father didn't seem to know who he was, except that he was, in his own way, just as different as Miranda, who by this point had started wonder if she hadn't once been called something else...

When her memories began to come back, Jenny, who was now really Miranda anyway, decided to keep...mostly quiet. One day, she resolved firmly, she would tell her adoptive father, who really actually _was_ her father, only not just yet, some of whom she was, but maybe only bits, and those bits fairly cryptic. And if those cryptic clues were occasionally a little like lies, then that was only to save all of them from the real truth, which couldn't really be told (or not yet, anyway). And if she squinted, she had to admit that it was all perfectly true. Just not true in the way it seemed, especially for an amnesiac Time Lord, who was quite possibly half-human in this incarnation anyway. And surely, surely it wasn't time for him to know yet?

But then time passed, and continued, and flowed onwards, in the way that time does, and Miranda never really found the _time_. And it all became a little confusing anyway, keeping everything straight in her head when parts of her memory (of her story, of her tale, of her life) kept _on_ disappearing, and reappearing, and never really staying put in one place. And what she had gathered from her father's mind (all those long, long years ago) didn't seem to be ringing quite true, at the moment, and she wasn't quite sure how that worked. Because right now, Gallifrey was gone, but the Daleks hadn't come into it at all, and Miranda wasn't very sure who Faction Paradox were, because they hadn't exactly been uppermost in her Dad's thoughts, back then (will not be uppermost, in the future? English hasn't evolved enough tenses, clearly), and she didn't want to ask her present-father (who wouldn't remember the answer anyway, likely).

And then Miranda found her destiny (out among the stars), and her father (adoptive or not) was staying behind, to search for his own destiny (to wait for someone he couldn't remember) back on Earth. And she hadn't said anything of her memories, but that was okay, because there was another explanation, that seemed to have been developing all this time anyway. Maybe time really is very good at healing itself, or maybe this had just all already happened, and maybe, Miranda decided, she should just stop thinking while she still had her sanity. And, she thought quietly, while she still didn't feel too guilty about the whole affair (but it would all turn out fine, right, because she was still here, and so were her memories of future-Doctor, right? So the paradoxes weren't yet destroying the fabric of the universe, and she was doing everything right, so far?).

She couldn't tell him though, not really, because of spoilers (just like that strange – although she really shouldn't judge – lady with one of her Dad's sonic screwdrivers had told her), and it just wasn't the _time_. Because events were still happening, and hadn't happened yet, and she couldn't tell him how the crisis (the tragedy that had followed him without fail, without ceasing, back/forward when she had been born) was to be resolved when it hadn't happened yet, could she? Because if Miranda told of the solution, then she would have to tell of the problem, and it would break his hearts to hear that he would (already had) destroy Gallifrey (and all its people, and others besides) for a second time, when he didn't yet know that he had destroyed it for a first.

And she had a daughter, and named her Zezanne, partly after another instance of her Dad's memories, and partly because she couldn't quite remember what she had seen in his mind anymore; and her own memory was still having erratic problems, which didn't help anything at all. And then when she met her father again (but still before when she remembered having first met him, back when she was first given a name), and she knew that she wouldn't be meeting him again, because some things a person (especially if that person is a child of Gallifrey) just _knows_, and while he would meet her again, he wouldn't ever know who she really was _unless she told him now_. And her own father wouldn't ever know what had happened to his own daughter (or where his other daughter had begun). She resolved that she really should tell him.

But she didn't breathe a word. She didn't know why, but she kept her silence. And when she smashed her own hourglass, and saved him (and the Universe, and the Universe was more important than she was) from his own morality and honour by taking away the hostage (because he _would_ have given in, even if she made him promise otherwise), she still hadn't told him.

She still hadn't found the courage. She hadn't found the _time_, and then she was ageing, instantly, dying within the Time Vortex (oh, the irony). And she had had a full life, and a long life, and had enjoyed it to the utmost, and had had all manner of adventures, just as she had first planned. But she had always wanted to do more, to experience _everything_, to find a way out, even when she knew there wasn't (maybe some of her father's seemingly eternal optimism had passed on to her, mingling with her soldier's pragmatism). And the last thoughts across her mind are not of the Universe, the Vortex, the Council of Eight, future ex-warring factions, or even of her own daughter.

She thinks _there's so much I didn't tell you. So much I will never tell you. _

And then she is gone.

-end-

**A/N: Um. Well, mentions of (the planet) Miranda and the Alliance are from the TV show _Firefly_. Jenny is from the episode _The Doctor's Daughter_. Miranda (the person; yes, she isn't mine either) is from the Expanded Universe books _Father Time _and _Sometime Never..._. But I'm ignoring the comics in which she appears (at least, I think so; I haven't read them). The Doctor mentioned in this is the Eighth. **

**Yes, I have sort of fudged the events of both novels, I admit it. But...I wrote the first half of this over a year ago, and the second half a little over a week ago. And anyway, they had to be fudged to work. And they weren't fudged too badly.**


End file.
